


valkyrie (a love letter)

by inmylife



Series: rookie girls collegeverse [4]
Category: BVNDIT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Neurodivergence, Probably ooc, Self-Indulgent, Self-Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 22:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18536521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: "This is going to sound really stupid," Seungeun says."No," Yiyeon argues from above her. Seungeun is wrapped in the older's arms, sitting on her bed. She feels like a five-year-old gone to her mom's room after a nightmare - she has the stuffed animal to boot, too, a soft sloth named Dasol."But... you make me feel safe."





	valkyrie (a love letter)

She sits on her bed for almost forty-five minutes, debating. 

She knows a girl who lives downstairs. Yiyeon. A senior. She’s… she’s nice. She’s on the same dance team Seungeun is and talked her through this one complicated step at practice three days ago. She’s fun and she has a nice smile to her. And Seungeun can’t do anything else right now but cry and listen to this one Ola Gjeilo setting of The Lake Isle Of Innisfree and stare at her bedcovers. This is what upperclassmen are for, right? According to Joanne, at least, this is a school full of mom friends. Yiyeon might want to help. 

Nah. She doesn’t want to bother her. 

But her roommate’s gonna be back soon. Seungeun loves Doah, they get along great, but Doah had to deal with her being sad enough during orientation week and then the first few days of classes. She likes Doah, likes living with her a lot, and she’s probably already put the girl off by running her mouth about her hyperfixations and forgetting about the other’s 9:30 calculus class on days when she herself doesn’t even have to get out of bed until 10. So, Seungeun concludes, she can’t keep being sad in her dorm. 

The common room? Yeah, that works. It’s tiny - the saddest, most pathetic common room on all North Campus, if her one-time forays to McGregor and 1837 have taught her anything - and has a door that shuts. And the couches are comfy. If it’s empty, it’ll be perfect for having an anxiety attack in. 

So she leaves her key hanging on the command hook outside her closet, takes a deep breath, shoves her phone and headphones into her pocket, and shuts her door behind her. 

It’s just… well… 

When Seungeun hits the landing between the first and second floors, she spies Yiyeon, sitting and drinking tea, both hands wrapped around a to-go cup from the dining hall. And Yiyeon spies her. 

“Seungeun!” she says, brightly. “Hi! How are you?” 

“I - I…” 

And Seungeun feels her jaw tense up and her eyes start to fill, and buries her head in her hands. 

She feels a tap on her arm. Yiyeon’s reached up, offering her hand. Seungeun takes it. 

“What’s wrong - Seungeun, hey…” the older girl tries. “Do you wanna sit?” 

There’s a part of Seungeun screaming at her to say no, to run away, back to her room or down to the common room, but that part is overtaken by the part of her that remembers just how desperately she wanted to message Yiyeon on Discord earlier and the part that so, so badly wants to be held right now. 

Seungeun walks over besides Yiyeon and sits next to her on the stairs. The older girl wraps an arm around her, after a quick murmur of “is this okay?” and an assent from Seungeun, and squeezes her close for a moment. 

“I. I, I messed up,” Seungeun gets out, trying to push her tears back in. She thinks Yiyeon is super cool, and she doesn’t want to look like a pathetic sad little firstie in front of her.    
“Hey, no,” Yiyeon soothes. “What happened?”

“You know Yeji, right? Hwang Yeji?” She feels Yiyeon nod. “She… we’ve been friends for years. Since middle school. She’s the reason I came here. And I was over at her dorm and she was upset about the class ring stuff and I - I just made it worse because I was trying to help but I don’t know - and she told me to just leave. I fucked it up and she’s mad at me.”

“Hey. I’m sure Yeji’s not mad at you,” Yiyeon responds, starting to rub Seungeun’s back. “I’ve seen you two hanging out, she loves you. If she’s stressed out then she’s stressed out, you know? She might have just needed to decompress.”

Seungeun makes a noncommittal sound. Yeah, that sounds reasonable, but her brain just doesn’t  _ do _ reasonable. “I, I just -” 

She stops in her tracks because people are walking up the stairs, people she doesn’t recognize. She freezes and she’s sure Yiyeon notices. 

“Want to go somewhere else?” the older girl asks softly once the Other People are gone. 

Seungeun nods. 

“Where?”

She shrugs. 

“Let’s go back to my room, then. Is that okay?” 

“Yeah,” Seungeun answers in a small voice.

She follows Yiyeon in her socked feet all the way to the end of the hall. “Sorry about the mess, it’s all Songhee’s - my roommate,” Yiyeon apologizes as she opens the door. 

The mess isn’t so bad, is the first thing Seungeun registers. There’s three small laundry baskets, all of them full and two of them overflowing into each other and onto the floor. There’s papers migrating off the desk at the far end of the room that she assumes to be Songhee’s. Yiyeon grabs a scarf and two textbooks off a desk chair and pulls it up, directs Seungeun to sit with a wave of her hand, and then steals Songhee’s chair for herself, setting it a few feet across from Seungeun before dragging something in between them that Seungeun thinks might be some kind of drum but it seems Yiyeon intends to use it as a table. 

Seungeun sits. She crosses her legs at the ankles and is thus entirely on the chair, staring down at her clasped hands in her open lap because she feels guilty about bothering Yiyeon like this. 

But she opens her mouth and she talks, because that’s all she does. She runs her mouth and then regrets it like crazy later. 

“You know how when you make new friends, right,” she leads in, “how there’s a couple weeks of getting to know each other and asking questions and everything’s fine? And then there’s that awkward phase where you don’t know what to do next and where the boundaries are, where, like - you don’t want to think you’re closer with someone than you actually are, or whatever?” Yiyeon nods. “That’s… that’s, it feels like that’s where I am. With everyone, right now, and I -” 

She breaks off, because she’s starting to full-on cry again. Yiyeon’s face changes expression into something even kinder, and she reaches over and takes Seungeun’s hands in hers. 

“I don’t want this to be like high school, you know, because, like, in high school I had a lot of acquaintances and no real friends, or - I guess - I’m good at making friends. I’m just really bad at keeping them.”

Yiyeon nods sympathetically across from her. “It’s really not like high school,” she reassures her. “I know that everyone says this, but - it’s just so different. People have more shared interests, shared politics here; there’s so many opportunities, all sorts of different stuff you can join. You have choices about who your friends can be. You can drop stuff at any time. No matter what, there are gonna be people here who are like you.” 

Seungeun shakes her head. “But that’s not it - I mean, kind of. It’s not about other people, it’s just… me.” 

She takes a second to compose herself. Yiyeon scooches the chair a little closer, and keeps holding her hands. Her thumbs are rubbing, back and forth, across the back of Seungeun’s palms. 

“I’m… I’m annoying. I’m just bad at this, at - at making people like me. It feels like everyone secretly doesn’t like me, and I-”

“Now hang on a second,” Yiyeon says. “That’s just not true. There’s not some, I don’t know, secret I Hate Seungeun club.” For some dumb reason this makes Seungeun laugh. “And if there were they would have to be hiding it from me, which is just impossible.” This gets another laugh. Seungeun is starting to suspect that there’s something about Yiyeon that just brings up the mood of everyone around her. “Seriously, though. You’re really sweet, and enthusiastic - my friend Chungha, she was telling me, actually, how she admired how you just jumped into Bhangra even though she knew you didn’t have any experience with it. That’s… that’s awesome.”

“Just you wait,” Seungeun mutters ruefully. “You can’t say nice things to me. Otherwise you’re never gonna get rid of me.”

Yiyeon pulls Seungeun into a hug. The older girl gives good hugs, Seungeun thinks - she’s the perfect height for it. And god this just makes her ache inside, because Yiyeon is so cool and so kind, and Seungeun doesn’t want to do anything to push her away even though she just knows that it’ll happen, someday, somewhere down the line. 

She bursts into tears,  _ again _ , and Yiyeon keeps holding her, silently, hands moving up and down Seungeun’s back, as Seungeun keeps hanging on tight, arms tense and hands clasped around Yiyeon. 

She doesn’t ever want to let go. 

Once she’s calmed down enough, she steps back. She’s gotten Yiyeon’s jacket wet, and she looks down awkwardly. 

“Hey. Seungeun, hey,” Yiyeon tells her. 

Seungeun looks back into Yiyeon’s eyes. 

“I don’t want to get rid of you.”

There’s a part of Seungeun that believes it. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to my amazing, amazing irls, who i love to pieces. you guys have turned me into someone capable of loving myself. you'll never read this, but you have changed me for the better, and i hope that you know that. this story is for you.
> 
> im ulting seungeun guys its a thing. its happening
> 
> find me on twitter @ohmyeverglow or tumblr @everykissbeginswith!


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